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Wednesday, 22 July 2015

Sue Smith from beautiful New Zealand with her take on this month's inspiration. I just love how she has picked up the purple and gold aspects of the painting and make it work for her own page.

I was inspired by the striking gold and purple colours, the umbrellas, the
vague arches in the background and the diamond shapes on the wet paving. Such a
beautiful painting! My son and DIL have just come home from Singapore and sent
me this perfect pic!

Hi! My name is Sue Smith and I live in the north of New Zealand. I have been
scrapping for about 15 years and still LOVE it! After scrapping teenagers and
weddings, I now mostly scrap my beautiful little grandies!! Too many photos, not
enough hours!!

I love to try different scrapping styles, which is why I have enough
scrapping supplies of every kind to last forever. Sorry kids! In order to get
more done, this year, my motto is ‘KISS’ (Keep It Simple Sue). I’m
trying!!

I am really excited to be Guest Designing this month and hope I can inspire
you to join the challenge.

Wednesday, 15 July 2015

Welcome to our mid month reveal. We are working with this wonderful painting by Shirley Charlton (aka Shirlroma) called "Umbrellas, wet street".

CRITERIA is to use water (liquid) in some way on your page (ink spray, gelatos, paper crumple, watered down paint, make handmade flowers etc). Just tell us how water was applied.

TONE-LILL

It has been a rather miserable spring and early summer here in Norway this year, with lots if rain and low temperature, so this month's challenge picture was perfect for me ;)I have made a box card with "a rainy day" stamp. I made my
own pattern paper using stamps and stencils with Distress ink and stain,
Dylusion spray ink, Glimmer Mist, acrylic paint and water with a spray mist.
Every layer was dried well before adding the next one.

Now it is your turn to have some fun with wet medias. Can't wait to see what you
want to share with us :)

LESLEY

This month I was inspired by the
dark & vibrant colours used, especially the purple. I have a word template
that I have been looking forward to using so thought this would be the layout to
do it. I have used Distress Stain, which added to the 'runny, wet' look of the
layout. Due to all the words I kept the rest of the layout simple as I felt that
the words say it all.DI

From the inspiration artwork this month, I used the colours of the
background,(mine are more muted), the umbrellas, and the pops of colour from
them and the people. I also loved the textural effect and started my background
with a flagstone-like stencil. My 'wet' effects were produced using gesso
sprayed with various ink mists, water and modelling pastes. I also used Glossy
Accents on parts of the umbrellas and the title. As can be seen in the photo,
taken in Hobart, rain is starting to fall on the nearby Mt Wellington, before
sweeping into the city...... and no, we didn't have umbrellas, but made a dash
for cover!STINA

I love this month´s painting so I was inspired both by the colors and the water element. Besides the gesso and modeling paste I have painted my background
with mists and Twinklings H2O.

JANE

Vivid Sydney is a unique annual event of light, music and ideas, featuring an outdoor 'gallery' of extraordinary lighting sculptures and spectacular illumination of many of Sydney's iconic buildings. This year much of the event experienced inclement weather and the image of bustling crowds and colour enhancing reflections on watery streets in the painting very much reminded me of similar scenes in the Sydney CBD.

Now it is your turn, we'd love to see what you can do ...

Remember we happily accept all forms of paper crafting for your entry including digital and encourage international submissions. All we ask is that you create a new entry for our challenge and you are most welcome to combine with a maximum of two additional challenges. We offer two prizes determined by team vote and one other prize purely chosen by random draw - so anyone can be a winner regardless of style or level of experience. You have until 11.55pm on the last day of the month to submit your entry.

Please pop back on the 22nd when we introduce you to our July guest designer from across the ditch, Sue Smith.

Wednesday, 8 July 2015

I will be announcing our June winners shortly but first I would like to introduce you to our next edition of Tips, Tricks and Techniques for 2015 presented by our very creative team member, Jo Tritton."Faux Quilting" technique by Jo Tritton

Firstly let me say that I am not claiming this as a
technique that I invented myself in anyway way. I learnt this technique from a
tutorial in a past Scrapbooking Memories Magazine (sorry I can't remember who
the Scrapbooking Memories Master was). I recently used this (what I call) "Faux
Quilting" technique to make a wall art frame for a baby's nursery. It was done
on quite a large scale but I wanted to show you how you can use it on a much
smaller project. Following is the instructions on how to use this on a
card.

Firstly I punched a square as my template. Here I have
used a 1" square punch. It works best if you punch it from a sturdy piece of
cardstock. I then punched circles from my chosen pattern paper that I want to
use on the project. Here I have used a 1 3/8" circle punch. However I did trim a
little bit off my square template to make it fit better within the circle. You
can use a large square & circles if you want, depending on the size of your
project.

Place the square template on your piece of pattern
paper on the side that you want showing. Make sure the corners of the square are
sitting neatly at the edge of the circle.

Fold the edges of the circle up around the square,
then take away your square template.

Your circle should now look like this.

I made six from co-ordinating papers to fit on a 6x4
sized card.

I used a piece of co-ordinating paper as the base for
my card. Play around with your placement before glueing the squares in place so
that you are happy with the pattern. After sticking them in place fold down the
adjoining edges a bit more so that you can see a bit of the reverse side of the
pattern paper.

Now the fun part! Select little embellishments to sit
inside your squares. Or you can leave them empty if you are happy with
showcasing your beautiful pattern paper. Personally, I love finding miniature
items in my stash to place inside them for interest. As you can see from my
Nursery Wall Art I used items that are suitable for a baby. For this card I
wanted it to be feminine so I used flowers & pearls. Small buttons and metal
charms are also ideal for this technique. To this card I added a "happy" die cut
over the top which wasn't too chunky so that you can still see the faux quilting
underneath.

I'm going to include this technique in a layout very
soon and I'd love to see what creations you can make from it as well. Thanks for
looking :)

I am so in love with these Jo, what a sensation technique and could be used in so many ways.

and now onto our June winners .....

Thank you everyone for playing along with us last month - again we had some wonderful entries. Could I just remind everyone that while we welcome you combining with other challenges our limit is two - so ours plus two others only. I don't want to disqualify anyone from being in the running for our prizes but unfortunately this is what happened with several of our entries last month.

Wednesday, 1 July 2015

Welcome to July - I can't believe we are past the mid way point this year and are now on the downhill run to Christmas - now that is a depressing thought!This month we hope to inspire you with this wonderful painting by Shirley Charlton (aka Shirlroma) called "Umbrellas, wet street". We thought it was kind of fitting considering all the rain we have been getting on the east coast.

CRITERIA is to use water (liquid) in some way on your page (ink spray, gelatos, paper crumple, watered down paint, make handmade flowers etc). Just tell us how water was applied.

Shirley Roma Charlton was born in Malawi Central Africa and is now based in Brisbane, Australia. She is an international professional fine artist and her work has sold all over the world. With many art Exhibitions behind her and having judged many art shows, she loves teaching art. Her inspirational watercolours and soft pastels show a love for seascapes while her figure painting show vibrant rich colours with bold strokes.

Proceeds from her work goes back to Malawi to help a village called Manyowe outside Blantyre. She also teaches art for the unemployed and homeless.

And some inspiration from the first of our team ...

LIZZY

I really loved this painting, so
attempted to imitate the colours in the background, as well as the look of the
paving. I used lots of wet mediums and have popped a step by step on my blog if
anyone is interested in trying to create a similar look!

ELAINE

I just learnt a technique from my friend of using watercolour on scrapbook
pages, so it was perfect timing. I painted first on clear acetate and then
placed the acetate upside down on my page. The bonus was I could get the paint
right before I placed it on my page. I did the top and bottom the same colours
as the inspiration painting and placed my photo and embellishments along the
centre of my page like the people are on the inspiration painting.

JO

I've used water and spray mists on this.

MARY

I started with choosing mist colours that made me think of a cold ,wet,
winter day and spraying them in a manner to make it feel cold and gloomy. I
added splats with ink and a stamp for puddles and rain splatting. I also added
some leaf stamps for leaves on the ground. A crackle stamp for the pavement and
I used the sequins for rain.

HELENE

I always use watercolors on my backgrounds and chose to do so on this layout too. This time I used green and yellow. To highlight the water color theme I also used patterned papers with water color patterns.

DEB

The starting point for my page was the combination of colours and I also
took inspiration from the silhouettes and the wet pavement. I painted some
watercolour paper first, using an ink tense block applied with a wet brush.
Coloured texture paste through a stencil created the “path”. Then the “puddle”
was formed by dropping mists from an eye dropper. Water was rubbed over non
permanent ink for the border.

WENDY

To get the wet/liquid look I used Glimmer Mist, Kaiser Mists and sequins on the background. I was inspired by the vivid colours and the sense movement in the inspirational piece. I used birds, butterflies and flourishes to portray this sense of movement. I also used a large photo so the subject colour and detail wouldn't get lost.

And now it is your turn ......

Please upload the DIRECT link to your actual entry with the link tool on the LEFT by 11.55pm on July 31st, 2015. We'd love to see yournewpaper, digital, mixed media or off the page entries. Why not try doing a pocket page spread? Please no back-dated submissions.

You may combine our challenge with a sketch and a product/technique challenge (so two additional challenges). Please include our inspirational picture and challenge details on your blog post as well as provide a link back to us at ARTastic ... and don't forget to tell us how you were inspired by our challenge.

You may enter more than once in any month as long as each submission is with a different creation. International entries are very welcome.

Please pop back on the 8th for The ARTastic 3T's - Tips, Tricks and Techniques brought to you this month by our delightful team member, Jo Tritton.

Our June winners will also be announced at this time so please make sure you call past.

MARCH Prize from our wonderful sponsor

MARCH second prize - if more than 8 entries

February inspiration is by Jill Foster called Fringe Faces

FEBRUARY entries ...

February random draw prize

2nd random draw prize

if more than 8 entries

NO WORD VERIFICATION please

Our Creative Team love to leave comments on each and every entry, so please make it easier for them to do so and remove WORD VERIFICATION for your comments. If you choose to use specialist galleries please be aware we may not be able to leave comments for you.

ARTastic is a challenge blog with a difference. We find inspiration in works of art.THE RULES - You don't need to be arty to play along with us - we accept traditional paper, digital, mixed media and off the page creations at any level. International entries are welcome. You may combine with other challenges. Please include our inspirational artwork and a link back to ARTastic on your entry and tell us how you were inspired by our artwork.